SWNOVELS Chapter 20
SOL GOVERNANCE HEADQUARTERS; PACIFICALIS ISLAND…
“What,” Admiral Shan exclaimed from her personal transporter.The image of Dr. Urla Franks was jerky and the audio was being drown out by other people’s excited voices!“Urla, can you go to a quiet area where I can hear you?”
“They’re back…they’re back, Reshma…every damn one of them…!”
It was so loud where ever her good friend was, that Admiral Shan simply chose to close the call and got out of her personal vehicle that she had just parked as she arrived at one of the parking structures in the Governance headquarters facility.She jumped upon hearing loud bangs of fireworks further away, toward the downtown area of Pacificalis Island.Several more popping and splashing of colorful lights were seen seconds later.She frowned to herself…was today some holiday she had forgotten about?
Just then, her communicator had gone wild with calls!While the admiral was looking at her screen to see the identification of the several callers, another section of her communicator had a portion of the monitor devoted to news…and that’s when she saw the unbelievable news of the returned humans from the Visitors!
Admiral Shan found herself screaming for joy!A small group of Governance officers, also in the parking structure, saw her and ran to Admiral Shan; thinking she was under attack!Then she explained to them the news.While she was uncontrollably telling the young group the news of the Visitors releasing all 4oo-thousand-plus humans that they had abducted, the young officers, also, started to get calls on their own communicators!
This went on for about thirty-minutes around the admiral.Various officers and cadets ran up to her and her constantly growing entourage!For they knew that she was the Governance’s military official in charge of handling the Phenomenon with the Visitors!
By the time the large crowd around Admiral Shan made it to the main area of Headquarters, it was absolute mayhem!The news had long gotten to the Governance’s home base before Shan had gotten back from, yet, another meeting across the Island!
Someone had requested to the base’s Sentient to bring up one of the official news media’s report on the Visitors…by the time a projected news cast was pulled up by the Sentient, a hush came over the large crowd in Headquarters’ lobby.
The report showed a myriad of shaky images and vids of the Visitors taken by people throughout the several months of the Phenomenon.The media report also showed shots of every location where humans had been abducted by the Visitors:the Pluto area; the special class ship The Justifier; space station Watcher 2; the asteroid field of Asteropia; various space stations and habitats; Respect Hausa and his Hausanite disciples of the Protectors’ Return fleet…
But then that same media had showed a sea of Humanity—it was every person that was abducted by the Visitors.As the media report played on, it was slowly becoming clear that something was strange about how and where they were shown in the report…how strange all the Returned faces were blank; as if they were some automatons, standing rod-straight.
And as the vid of the Returned panned out from that sea of Humanity, where they were, was becoming more clear:they were out in a field of tall grass.Somewhere in the United States, in its Great Plains region, perhaps…
And that report’s image of the Returned kept panning out, until the pattern that was made with the standing, silent bodies was clear:the Returned were configured in such a way that they formed a stylized mock-up of the Sol system!To the left, a representation of Sol, and as one looked all the way to the right of that crude model of the solar system, it extended as far as Pluto.But, in that simple icon of the Sol system, made with the forever-silenced Returned, instead of a circle to represent Erth, there was a big, stylized ‘X’!
A little warning from those who came for a visit from the edge of the solar system…